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UC Santa Barbara, February 8, 2014

This
workshop is designed to increase participant knowledge and use of student
assessment techniques around the pre-identified biochemistry and molecular
biology foundational concepts and skills and to actively engage
participants in creating assessment tools and best practices. This
workshop is open to all undergraduate faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and
graduate students interested in undergraduate science education.

Initial Overall Learning Goal: Understand how nonsense, missense, and silent mutations affect characteristics of the resulting polypeptide.Initial Specific Learning Objective: Students should be able to convert a DNA sequence into amino acid sequence and identify how mutations affect protein composition. Given a DNA sequence, students should translate into protein and identify effects of mutations on protein structure/function.Alignment TablePresentation Video (8 min)

Initial Overall Learning Goal: Students should understand and predict how a mutation can change the amino acid sequence of a gene product and how it defines a phenotype. Initial Specific Learning Objective: Students should be able to explain how changes in nucleotide, amino acid sequence, transcript splicing can change gene expression and protein structure and function.Alignment TableCase Study FigurePresentation Video (10 min)

Initial Overall Learning Goal: Students should be able to summarize the different levels of control (including reaction compartmentalization, gene expression, covalent modification of key enzymes, allosteric regulation of key enzymes, substrate availability and proteolytic cleavage) and relate these different levels of control with homeostasis.Initial Specific Learning Objective: Students should be able to understand protein structures and functions and apply that to metabolic changes.Alignment TablePresentation Video (8 min)

Initial Overall Learning Goal: Students should be able to compare and contrast the potential ways in which the function of a macromolecule might be affected and be able to discuss examples of allosteric regulation, covalent regulation and gene level alterations of macromolecular structure/function.Initial Specific Learning Objective: Students should be able to understand the different types of regulation and the mechanisms by which they alter activity.Alignment TablePresentation Video (12 min)

Initial Overall Learning Goal: Students should be able to compare and contrast the potential ways in which the function of a macromolecule might be affected and be able to discuss examples of allosteric regulation, covalent regulation, and gene level alterations of macromolecular structure/function.Initial Specific Learning Objective:1)Understand that the function of a protein is determined by its three-dimensional structure; 2) Compare the ways in which allosteric, covalent, and gene-level protein regulation modify protein function via changing protein structure; 3) Given a specific change in a protein structure, predict how the function of the protein may be affected. 4) Suggest reasons why it may be advantageous for a cell to use allosteric and/or covalent modifications to regulate proteins, rather than levels of protein expression.Alignment TablePresentation Video (9 min)

Learning Objectives - Foundational Skills

Initial Overall Learning Goal: Given an experimental observation, students should be able to develop a testable and falsifiable hypothesis.Initial Specific Learning Objective: Students need to be able to describe the underlying scientific problem addressed by the data, interpret the experimental data, and then generate a new or alternative hypothesis based upon the experimental evidence.Alignment TablePresentation Video (12 min)

Initial Overall Learning Goal: Given an experimental observation, students should be able to develop a testable and falsifiable hypothesis.Initial Specific Learning Objective: Students should be able to represent data, identify controls and variables, and draw conclusions and hypotheses.Alignment TablePresentation Video (8 min)

Initial Overall Learning Goal: Students should be able to recall principles of chemical structure (i.e. covalent bonds, polarity, the hydrophobic effect, hydrogen bonds and other non-covalent interactions), and apply them in the context of the dynamic aspects of molecular structure. Initial Specific Learning Objectives: Students should be able to predict how changes to amino acid side chains might affect protein structure (in different regions of a protein i.e. interior/exterior).Alignment TablePresentation Video (5 min)

Initial Overall Learning Goal: Given a hypothesis students should be able to identify the appropriate experimental observations to be measured, as well as appropriate control variables. Initial Specific Learning Objectives: Students should integrate the hypothesis, background information and toolbox, to identify appropriate experimental techniques that achieve discrete, specific outcomes to determine necessity and/or sufficiency that will either 1. Disprove or 2. Corroborate the hypothesis in different approaches.Alignment TablePresentation Video (8 min)

Learning Objectives - Concepts from Allied Fields

Initial Overall Learning Goal: Students should be able to recall principles of chemical structure (i.e. covalent bonds, polarity, the hydrophobic effect, hydrogen bonds and other non-covalent interactions), and apply them in the context of the dynamic aspects of molecular structure. Initial Specific Learning Objectives: Students should be able to predict how changes to amino acid side chains might affect protein structure (in different regions of a protein i.e. interior/exterior).Alignment TablePresentation Video (7 min)

Initial Overall Learning Goal: Students should be able to compare and contrast the potential ways in which the function of a macromolecule might be affected and be able to discuss examples of allosteric regulation, covalent regulation and gene level alterations of macromolecular structure/function.Initial Specific Learning Objectives: 1) Students should be able to define the different types of non-covalent and covalent interactions on a chemical level. They should provide examples (ionic, polar, hydrogen bonding, van der Waals, dipole, hydrophobic interactions, covalent) and rank them by their relative energetic strengths. 2). Students should be able to identify which of these interactions occur within and between different macromolecules and understand how they contribute to the different levels of molecular structure. They should be able to draw specific examples of bonding (see Objective 1 above) within and between macromolecules (proteins and DNA). 3) Students should apply this knowledge to propose how a macromolecule and a novel small molecule interact with one another. They should be able to refine a small molecule or recommend a mutation to improve the binding affinity.Alignment TablePresentation Video (10 min)